


Time is a Slippery Thing

by Squidgilator



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Peter Parker comes back, Slow Burn, eventual miles/peter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 11:22:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19440454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squidgilator/pseuds/Squidgilator
Summary: Ten years ago, Peter Parker had his face shoved in a multidimensional portal. Is it any wonder that he hiccuped in time a little? It's 2028 and Miles Morales finds himself meeting 2018 Peter Parker-- who is just as confused as Miles about the whole thing. Peter faces some hard truths about the years he missed, but he and Miles get closer as they figure out what to do next.





	Time is a Slippery Thing

It was ten years before Peter came back, and by then we already knew something was _up_. Turns out you can’t open an interdimensional, time and space-bending, motherfucking galaxy-destroying portal without facing some consequences. Like, bigger consequences than a week’s worth of slight mayhem. 

Of course, we didn’t learn that for a few years.

* * *

_First recorded incident:_

_July 1st, 2020: A single subway car appears on the B-line tracks between 145th and 135th street. It does not appear to be damaged in any way. It matches, down to the serial number, a car already in existence—but with slightly different graffiti. The appearance of the car is dismissed as an elaborate, and impressive, prank._

_Second recorded incident:_

_September 23rd, 2021: A man presents himself to a Manhattan police station, claiming to be somebody called Michael Sandino. He says he has lost his memories from the past two years—that he could have sworn he had gone to sleep the night before and it was still 2018. A man called Michael Sandino already lives in Brooklyn, and the two men look identical. The “real” Michael can’t be in the same room as the new one, saying it’s “too spooky.” DNA testing confirms that they are either identical twins, or the same person. The story is hushed up quickly, and little word of it gets to the public. However, a specialized task force is formed to investigate the matter._

_Third recorded incident:_

_December 4th, 2021: An exact copy of the Balto memorial in Central Park materializes 50 feet away from the original. Four or five people see it happen. Forensic testing reveals it is not a fake. It appears, in fact, to be the exact same statue. This incident starts off a media frenzy—somebody leaks the existence of a task force created to investigate incidents like this one, and soon people from all over New York are reporting similar strange occurrences—everything from coffee cups duplicating themselves unexpectedly to animals resembling long-dead pets appearing in bedrooms. Michael Sandino becomes a minor celebrity. Scientists from all over the world comment on the situation. Physicists speculate about wormholes, multidimensional mixups. Doomsdayers proliferate, cults form._

_For two years, the world seems like it might be ending. But no—it doesn’t. The world continues. Small incidents continue to be reported, and all that can be confirmed occur in the state of New York. Two or three people claim that they fell asleep years earlier and have doubles somewhere. They are all proved wrong. A federal program, the Department of Physical Anomalies, is created and immediately hires 50 of the world’s most sought-after scientists, as well as the original members of the specialized task force. Their work is constant and difficult, a combination of detective work, scientific research, and information control._

* * *

Peter came back on February 20th, 2028. And I would know, because it was the day of my PhD qualifying exam. That morning, the morning I would officially become an honest-to-God physics PhD candidate at NYU, I woke up feeling like I got hit by a bus. 

That was probably because I had been hit by a bus the night before. 

Being Spider-Man can be a real fucking pain in the ass. And the head, and the legs, and the everything else. On that particular night, I had caught a burglar sneaking out of a convenience store he had just robbed. One good eyeful of me, hanging over the roof of the next-door building, had him on the run. Unfortunately, that meant he had jumped on to the nearest city bus, shoved the driver out, and taken it full-speed down the West Side Highway. What a dumbass. 

He had an entire police squadron on him in a hot minute, but I thought I might be able to slow him down by stringing up a net of webbing as a barrier. Long story short—I did slow down the bus. I just also happened to get in the way. 

So the morning of my exam, I was black, blue, and red all over, even with my spidey-healing in full working order. The thought of getting down to the university building where my exam was taking place felt like it would require superhuman effort. Not that that’s an excuse when you’re superhuman, but it’s still not fucking fun.

But I made it to the exam and you better believe I blew that motherfucker out of the water. Five professors grilling me about physics concepts that Albert Einstein only dreamed about? Please—I eat that shit for breakfast. Okay, yeah, Professor Landerau might have asked me if I was going to throw up, and Professor Swormer looked like she was preparing a consolation speech—but as soon as they started asking questions, and I could focus on the shit I knew like the back of my hand? I was golden.

Still, you don’t forget being reamed by five professors for three hours, or finding out that you passed the hardest test of your life from the woman who solved the Gregor-Hozund equation. And you can be goddamn sure I was going to get shit-faced on bad champagne afterwards as a sounded-good-at-the-time reward for my hard work. Benji, Martha and I had all passed our quals within three days of each other—we went fucking _nuts_. 

So you can imagine why it was extra jarring to be woken up from my drunken, terrible slumber by a person who I was pretty sure—no, positive—had died 10 years earlier.

I woke up because said somebody was rudely shaking me awake. When I looked into Peter Parker’s face, I knew immediately who it was, even before the spidey wiggles kicked in. His face had been burned into my brain in 2018, when I watched him die. It’s funny—if you see somebody’s face as they shuffle off their mortal coil, it’s pretty much burned into your brain’s temporal lobe for as long as you live. I don’t recommend it. Plus Peter Parker was a celebrity—the first Spider-Man. Of course I knew who he was! _Everyone_ knew who he was!

I think the first thing I said to Peter was something like: “Wuh-gargh...?” which just goes to show how cool I am under pressure, and with a hangover. Super cool. 

“It’s me,” he said, his eyes looming large in the semi-darkness. “Peter. Uh—Spider-Man. The other one,” he added. “The other Spider-Man.” 

“Blerh—wuh?” I’m pretty sure is what I replied. Like I said—cool as a cucumber. 

Peter grabbed something from my bedside table and shoved it into the hand that wasn’t still tangled in sheets. It was a to-go coffee cup, the warmth and weight of it suggesting that it might even contain coffee. 

My senses were coming back to me, and I sat up. My body immediately retaliated and I groaned as the blood pounded in my temples. Peter snorted and I looked up just in time to see a small smile ghost over his face. 

“Better drink that,” he said, nodding at the coffee. “This is going to be a rough morning.”

Twenty minutes later, I was mildly revived but no less confused. 

“Wait,” I said, shutting my eyes to reconsider the situation. “You woke up—”

“Appeared,” he interrupted. “I wasn’t asleep, I just, kind of—I dunno—blinked.”

“Okay, you _appeared_ in the subway, and the last thing you remember is sticking your face in the portal that Kingpin created _ten years ago_.” 

Peter nodded, looking miserable.

“So,” I said slowly, “You don’t remember the rest of the fight...?”

He shook his head.

“Or, uh, dying?”

He blanched.

“Fuck.” He had been standing by the shitty little table I had gotten off an old roommate. But at those words he sat down heavily in my only chair, looking like he just been punched in the stomach. 

I kicked myself hard in the guilt bone. “Fuck—I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize—I mean, I didn’t think—” I felt my face heat up with embarrassment and sympathy. I moved towards him and then stopped, not sure what to do. He waved me off, turning away.

“Don’t—I mean, it’s not your fault. I knew—I knew something must have happened. I saw something, a picture—” he stopped, took a breath. When he started again, his voice was steadier. “I saw a picture of Spider-Man and I knew it wasn’t me. I mean, the costume and all... and you don’t really look at all like me, even with the suit on. You’re pretty tall.” He smiled half-heartedly. “And then when I saw the date, I knew something must have happened. To me, I mean. Somehow I lost ten years?”

He looked over at me, expectantly, but my mind was reeling, and I had to gulp some coffee down to stall for time. When I could finally speak, I tried not to let everything come out too quickly.

“Something did happen to you,” I said carefully. “But it’s not what you think. I’m not even sure I can explain it.”

But I tried—I told him how I had watched him get pushed briefly into the portal, and then watched him die at the hands of Kingpin. I told him about the four other spiderpeople, about the fight to shut down the gate forever. I told him the whole goddamn saga, and then I kept going. Because everything I hadn’t been able to talk about without sounding like a conspiracy nut could finally come out—all the weird time-and-space things that had been happening since the portal had opened. 

All the news stories that I had been mentally collecting for years spewed out of me. The things in New York that had mysteriously doubled, like the second statue of Balto that had just... _appeared_... one day. The cars that had been scrapped years ago and then reappeared in driveways, looking exactly like they did in 2018. The guy—Michael?—who had claimed to fall asleep in 2018 and wake up in 2020. I knew, _knew_ , that this was related to the portal and I was 99.99% sure that we hadn’t seen the last of it.

Somehow Peter standing here proved that—I didn’t know how, but it did. The world was all fucked up, and now Peter Parker was back. 

Peter was obviously trying to deal with it, too. 

“So all of this... stuff...” he said, slowly. “Happened ten years ago? And I just came back now? Why?”

I shrugged. “Dunno, man. All these weird things that are happening, they’ve been happening for years.” I was really fucking tired. And my head hurt. And not just because of the hangover—I didn’t know how to talk to someone who was dead, not to mention someone who was ten years from the past. Part of me was glad to see him, of course. Hell, he had been my childhood hero! But how was I supposed to help him with whatever baggage he had? How do you help someone come back from the dead? What was he going to _do_?

Plus, he was another Spider-Man. My stomach flopped inside of me as I considered this. Ten years ago I would have been ecstatic to have more Spider-people around. I _was_ ecstatic about it ten years ago. Now... I wondered what it would be like, having Peter around. To have two people on this job. 

I won’t lie, I was getting pretty sick of getting hit by buses and still having to get to class the next day. And there were definitely days that spending all day at lab and still having to get my crime fighting on in the evening clashed with other things, like, say, having a social life. I considered what it would mean to have evenings free—and not just some evenings free, but all of them. It was almost inconceivable. 

But there was also a part of me that rebelled hard against the thought of somebody else, even the OG Spider-Man, doing _my_ job. I had that shit down to a science and the thought of someone else messing around with it made me profoundly uncomfortable. 

“I really have to take a shower,” I mumbled, finally untangling myself from my bed sheets and getting up. Or, I almost did, and then realized that wasn’t a great idea. 

“Um, can you...?” I said, pointedly. 

Peter looked up, confused. “What?” 

“Turn around?”

“Oh. Sorry.” He turned around, although his preoccupied expression suggested that some full frontal nudity wouldn’t have fully registered.

I hobbled to the shower and spent twenty minutes in hot water, staring off into the middle distance, thinking about what to do next. Could we go to the police? Call the FBI? _Can_ you call the FBI? I knew that there was some government task force supposed to handle this kind of stuff, had even done some research about how it worked and who was in it, but I didn’t know how to contact them. I mean, not without sounding like a paranoid schizophrenic. _“Excuse me, hotline? This is Spiderman, and now there’s two of me.”_

The hot water started to go, and I sighed and turned off the shower. I’d just have to start with old news stories about the task force and try to contact somebody directly. 

When I stepped out of the bathroom, Peter was standing by the window. Without turning around, he said carefully: “Miles. Before I came here, I went to my Aunt May’s house.”

My stomach dropped down to the soles of my feet. I instantly, and without intending to, pictured the house: an empty, dark shell of a place. Still technically Aunt May’s—there was some complicated legal proceedings to do with the inheritance—but no longer suffused with the warm light she had brought into it; no longer filled with her things; the house only a reminder of loss. 

“I’m so, so, sorry,” I said, quietly, the wound opening fresh in my heart like I had yanked forty stitches out. But I knew there was no comparison to the pain Peter had to be feeling—he had seen her yesterday (albeit yesterday, 10 years ago) and she had been _fine_. He would never have to see her at her sickest—weak, ill, hair falling out from the chemo—but he would also never get to say goodbye. 

Peter didn’t turn around, but his head drooped and his shoulders were shaking. I could sense that I had confirmed his worst thoughts—thoughts he hadn’t wanted to be true. I stood there, momentarily uncertain of my own two feet. It was more silent than my apartment had ever been—a thick, stifling stillness that might have been my own ears shutting everything out. After a long, still moment, I made a decision. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew what my mom would do—so I got dressed, located my wallet, and went out to buy some groceries. 

When I got back, Peter was locked in the bathroom. I started cooking, seasoning and frying two chicken thighs on my tiny stove before starting rice. An hour later, Peter was still in the bathroom and I was sitting at the table, thinking about Aunt May and feeling savagely, gut-wrenchingly helpless. 

At the same time that the oven timer began to beep loudly, the door to the bathroom clicked open and Peter emerged, red-eyed and tight-lipped. Without saying anything, I split the meal onto two plates and put both on the table, sitting down on the upside-down crate that doubled as a chair when I had company. 

Peter looked at the food, but his eyes were unfocused. For a few seconds, the room had the air of a face-off—him versus arroz con pollo. And then it broke, and he shook his head once before grabbing his coat off the back of my chair and slipping out the front door. 

So. I poked at my plate. Not the right decision to cook, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Would love feedback on this idea and the execution! I'm not super familiar with the Spider-Man canon so I welcome clarification & correction. Next chapter as soon as I figure out if people are into it. :)


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